Nearly 10 Million Americans Move To Medicaid Since Obamacare Launch

While enrollment on government-run Obamacare exchanges gets the bulk of media attention, sign-ups for Medicaid have been even greater, in no small part due to another part of the Affordable Care Act.

Since October 2013, enrollment in Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program had grown by about 9.7 million people as of this past October, according to data released Thursday by the federal government. That’s 17 percent higher than what was the average monthly enrollment level seen from July through September 2013.

That bump brings total enrollment in the programs that provide coverage without a premium charge to the poor and young, respectively, up to 68.5 million people nationally. A bit more than half of those people are children.